From sold-out concert tours to major sports tournaments, events grasped the attention of audiences, and hoteliers, around the world in 2023.
One event stood out among the others in regard to hotel performance, though: Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour. According to CoStar data, the tour added $208 million in additional U.S. hotel room revenue. It also became the first tour to ever break $1 billion.
The U.S. leg of Swift's tour reached 20 cities and consisted of 53 concerts, beginning in Glendale, Arizona, on March 17 and ending in Inglewood, California, on Aug. 9. Swift then headed to Mexico City for four shows in August before taking the stage in Argentina and Brazil in November with tour stops in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Cory Chambers, chief commercial officer of Hospitality Ventures Management Group, said the impact on hotel performance was “incredible” in cities along Swift’s tour. HVMG has a property that is in walking distance to the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, and Chambers said the three nights Swift was in town in April were the three best days of the hotel’s year, with revenues three times higher year over year.
“The Taylor Swift impact was unlike the rest,” he said. “That extraordinary event and tour created the question and the interest in these types of events. Special events always create demand uplift, but that one was extraordinary in a way that we don’t typically see.”
Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour had less of an impact on hotel performance but was significant in its own right, generating an estimated $4.5 billion in economic impact across the U.S. The tour had 56 shows across 39 cities, began in Stockholm, Sweden, on May 10 and concluded in Kansas City on Oct. 1.
Kelsey Fenerty, manager of analytics for STR, said the success of these concerts isn’t attributed to a new trend with concerts or revenge travel, but more of a barometer of the popularity of both Swift and Beyoncé.
“It’s very artist-dependent. … I would say the Taylor Swift is definitely [fear of missing out]. I think Beyoncé is just straight demand,” Fenerty said. “I wouldn’t say that it’s that much revenge travel; I think it’s just really strong demand for those two artists.”
While the two concerts would’ve been successful any year, there was more of an emphasis on events this year in general, said Sean Largotta, owner and partner of Gansevoort Hotel Group, which includes the Gansevoort Meatpacking NYC.
He said strength in demand for leisure activities and hotel stays continued in 2023, including demand for events at venues such as the Javits Convention Center, Madison Square Garden and the Lincoln Center.
“You’re seeing an uptick anywhere from 8% to 12% on our end in the Meatpacking [District] of that guest experience that’s coming in just for — whether it’s Beyoncé, Taylor Swift — these one-off events that we didn’t see or we didn’t capture the year before,” he said.
Sergio Maclean, principal owner of Mac&Lo Hospitality Management & Consulting and former operator of the Shinola Hotel in Detroit, said the biggest change in hotel activity when a big event came to town was the pickup in bookings coming months in advance rather than weeks in advance.
“In hospitality right now, that pickup is very late. You can only see two or three weeks before whatever date you start putting up,” he said. “Now the moment these concerts get announced you are picking up two, three months in advance.”
Sporting Events
A few non-annual sporting events, along with the usual suspects, positively affected hotel performance in the markets where they were held in 2023.
The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup led to hotels in nine cities in New Zealand and Australia achieving high average daily rates, revenue per available room and occupancies from July 20 through Aug. 20.
“The FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, over there winter is [the U.S.’s] summer. It did pretty good on the rates, especially in Sydney with the final,” Fenerty said. “There’s not a lot else happening in the winter there, so that was really helpful for them.”
Australian hotels performed the best on Aug. 19, the day before the final. Occupancy reached 80.9%, ADR was $196.52 and RevPAR was $159.02.
The next month, the Rugby World Cup took place across nine cities in France from Sept. 8 through Oct. 28. France’s ADR reached $391.85 on Oct. 1 and its RevPAR peaked at $310.89 on Sept. 30, the highest marks for both since June.
The Cricket World Cup ran from Oct. 5 through Nov. 19 and was hosted by India. The country reached its highest daily occupancy level since February on Oct. 11 at 77.9% when Bangladesh faced off against Australia and England played Pakistan.
State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, hosted the Super Bowl this year on Feb. 12, and Phoenix-based hotels performed as well as any other host market has in the past. Average daily rate and revenue per available room for these hotels ranked second all-time for a Super Bowl host market, behind Miami when it hosted the game in 2020.
Even when adjusted for inflation, average daily rates outperformed the last two times Phoenix hosted the Super Bowl in 2008 and 2015 by a wide margin. In 2023, real ADR was $538 compared to $426 in 2015 and $440 in 2008.
Revived Demand in China
After being one of the last countries to shed COVID-19 restrictions in late 2022, China enjoyed a return-to-form in domestic hotel performance during its major events of the year.
The Lunar New Year on Jan. 22 was China’s first test of how demand would respond to the eased policies, and not only was it a relative success to the previous three years, but ADR surpassed pre-pandemic levels. RevPAR was up in 36 out of 43 markets in China over the Lunar New Year week compared to the same period in 2019.
May Day, China’s equivalent to Labor Day, also performed well, with Mainland China hotel occupancy indexed at 97% of 2019’s holiday weekend. The holiday ran from April 29 through May 3, and performance peaked on April 30 with an occupancy of 90.9% and ADR of 865 Chinese yuan ($121.53).
Golden Week took place from Sept. 30 to Oct. 7, and once again, the results were positive. Occupancy averaged 65.1% in Mainland China, and RevPAR was 12.3% higher than it was in 2019 across the country.
“All three [holidays] just had insane performance because it was the first time they celebrated in three years and no one was really going out of the country yet,” Fenerty said. “It was just a ton of domestic demand.”